Immigration Politics

[Cerin]

A word on my perspective: I don't watch any broadcast news; I don't listen to NPR; I will occasionally hear a 2-min. AP Radio News update if I'm listening to the radio. I get my news from the internet -- from the headlines I see when I sign on, from sometimes checking the headlines on MSN, and from Reader Supported News, which sends links to articles from various sources, some mainstream (NYT, WP, LAT), but most alternative. I think it is safe to say most are left-leaning. I don't visit political websites.

I don't have a good understanding of immigration law. I know there is a way to legally apply for entry into this country. I checked out a 2013 article from National Geographic which looked at some other major countries' immigration policies; it said that other countries also have a legal way for people to apply for entry, which means that controlling who and how many people enter their borders is not an idea unique to the U.S. I don't find the idea unreasonable, that a country would try to control who and how many people enter their borders.

So, I am completely befuddled by the left's stance on illegal immigration. As I perceive it (and I'm happy to be corrected), the left labels anyone who advocates enforcing our immigration laws a racist or xenophobe. If you express support for the idea of a wall at the southern border to stem illegal entry, you're a racist (and an idiot). If you think people here illegally should be deported, racist. If you think people trying to get in illegally should be detained, racist. There are sanctuary cities that do not cooperate with law enforcement related to people here illegally. 

It seems to me that this amounts to advocating an open border (although no politician will come out and say so). The Dems don't want a wall, they don't want more money for border security or detention centers, they don't want people prevented from entering illegally, they don't want people detained, they don't want people deported; they'll speak vaguely about 'border security,' but I have no idea what that might mean. So to me, this equals a de facto open border policy.

What I perceive as the right's view on illegal immigration makes more sense to me. Someone who has come into the country illegally has broken the law. They've shown a disregard for the law, and demonstrated an inclination to ignore the law when it is inconvenient. Normally in our society, we don't embrace lawbreakers and excuse their conduct. In fact, all office holders, to my knowledge, have taken an oath to uphold our laws.

Looking at that 2013 article on immigration, it said that Australia (roughly the size of the U.S., I think, but with only a tenth of the population according to my google search) had had applications for asylum increase by 37% from the previous year, up to 15,800 for the year. By comparison, we are getting over 100,000 people per month crossing illegally with the aim of requesting asylum. We don't have adequate facilities to process this many people; I am seeing detention centers referred to as concentration camps, and it occurs to me that this analogy is imperfect, because there is a very easy way to avoid being detained in one of these centers -- don't enter this country illegally.

So, those of you who agree with the point of view that people coming in illegally should be left alone, does it not worry you that people of ill intent might be among them? Do you not care that our laws are being disregarded without consequence? Do you think we can absorb any number of people who want to live here? What sort of security, if any, do you think there should be at the border? What does, or what should 'comprehensive immigration reform' mean? If we have a laissez-faire policy for our southern border, does that mean that we should also let anyone who wants to, come from anywhere in the world and reside here?

[yovargas]

My purely personal, extremely radical, and totally idealistic answer, as someone who views laws restricting where people can live and work in general as deeply, profoundly immoral, and broadly harmful to the well-being and progress of humanity, is that borders should indeed be wide open. Knowing that this will likely never actually happen in the real world, what I would say is that an illegal border crossing should be seen as a "crime" the same way speeding is a crime - if you insist on trying to deter that behavior, then simply give people who do it a reasonable fine and then let them be on their way.

But I don't really consider myself part of the left and I don't really know what a firm Dem would answer to your questions.

As an aside, I do not think that your views are racist or that if you disagree with my particularly extreme views on this you are racist. But if someone tells me that border security is their number one top priority amongst all the enormous number of extremely serious problems this country has, then I have to suspect this comes from a fear of brown people, because there is no other rational reason to be that concerned about illegal immigration. And right now, border security is the number one issue that Trump supporters say they are concerned about.

[Frelga]

Background - The way the US immigration laws work is that anyone can apply for asylum at the US embassy, while in the country for other reasons line a tourist visa, or at a port of entry. The process takes over a year, so for someone in fear of their life the embassy route is not tenable. Applying from inside the country allows you to live here legally (up to a year, I think) but does not give the right to work legally. Getting the most attention on the news are the people trying to apply for asylum at the port of entry.

This does not include other legal routes of immigration, such as work visa, marriage, and family unification. Nor does it include undocumented migrant workers who come to the US to work, earn money, and go home, or those who come into the country legally and overstay their visas.

[Sunsilver]

What Frelga said. These are the people getting all the bad press. In most cases, they are fleeing horrible conditions in their homeland. Things have to be pretty bad back home for you to want to go this route, knowing you will be incarcerated and not allowed to work or make money for up to a year while your claim is reviewed.

True illegal immigrants just sneak into the country on temporary visas (visiting a relative, etc.) and just go ahead and find work at a low-paying job where the employer doesn't care about their credentials.

This poem by a British/Somali immigrant graphically describes the conditions some of these people are fleeing from:

Home, by Warsan Shire (British-Somali poet)

no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark.

you only run for the border
when you see the whole city
running as well.

your neighbours running faster
than you, the boy you went to school with
who kissed you dizzy behind
the old tin factory is
holding a gun bigger than his body,
you only leave home
when home won't let you stay.

no one would leave home unless home
chased you, fire under feet,
hot blood in your belly.

it's not something you ever thought about
doing, and so when you did -
you carried the anthem under your breath,
waiting until the airport toilet
to tear up the passport and swallow,
each mouthful of paper making it clear that
you would not be going back.

you have to understand,
no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land.

who would choose to spend days
and nights in the stomach of a truck
unless the miles travelled
meant something more than journey.

no one would choose to crawl under fences,
be beaten until your shadow leaves you,
raped, then drowned, forced to the bottom of
the boat because you are darker, be sold,
starved, shot at the border like a sick animal,
be pitied, lose your name, lose your family,
make a refugee camp a home for a year or two or ten,
stripped and searched, find prison everywhere
and if you survive and you are greeted on the other side
with go home blacks, refugees
dirty immigrants, asylum seekers
sucking our country dry of milk,
dark, with their hands out
smell strange, savage -
look what they've done to their own countries,
what will they do to ours?

the dirty looks in the street
softer than a limb torn off,
the indignity of everyday life
more tender than fourteen men who
look like your father, between
your legs, insults easier to swallow
than rubble, than your child's body
in pieces - for now, forget about pride
your survival is more important.

i want to go home, but home is the mouth of a shark
home is the barrel of the gun
and no one would leave home
unless home chased you to the shore
unless home tells you to
leave what you could not behind,
even if it was human.

no one leaves home until home
is a damp voice in your ear saying
leave, run now, i don't know what
i've become.

[Cerin]

Thank you three for your replies. Here are two articles I thought provided useful information. The Atlantic article is quite long:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ar ... ch/583252/

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/04/ ... -want.html

edit

Adding another link; this article talks about how the liberal view on immigration has changed markedly in recent years:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ar ... ke/528678/

[River]

The legal immigration process in the US is already long and hard. There are ways to come here to work on a temporary basis that are easier and I've known people who made use of them. You can also take an end-run around the whole thing by either winning the green card lottery (it's only available to nations we don't already get lots of people from ) or by marrying an American. I know people who've done that too. Believe it or not, that's not how my husband got his green card, though. He leveled up from a student visa to H1-B and then talked his employer into sponsoring him.

I also know people who over-stayed a tourist visa. This is actually the most common route for people without papers. It's not an easy way to live.

The border itself is in a state of crisis. The people currently swarming are asylum seekers from Central America. They are fleeing violence from gangs and dysfunctional societies. Whether their claims are legit or not is a question for the asylum officers. We are short on these. In fact, there are a lot of solutions we're short on as the trump Administration would rather listen to extremists with foolish ideas like walls. Because a border wall will totally solve the problem of people piling in at legal ports of entry. There's a huge deficit in both expertise within the executive branch and trust between the legislative and executive branches of government. A couple years ago, a potential deal on immigration policy that actually included funding for a wall was on the table and then Trump, at the last minute, changed his mind and rejected it. It's hard to negotiate when one side has proven they don't do it in good faith (there are also inter and intra-party splits on this). It also doesn't help that some immigration hard-liners like to slide some racially coded language into their arguments. Basically, we need some rational actors who can have rational discussions and we don't have them.

However, another huge factor that gets only minimal press is huge swaths of the American economy depend on cheap, imported labor. Construction, from digging the foundation to putting in the finishes. Agriculture, from working fields to packing meat. Services, like providing childcare, loading moving trucks, and so on. Workers in restaurants. Assembly work in factories. Housekeepers at hotels. There are legal means of bringing these people in but not enough to supply all the demand. The crack-downs on these last couple years have left crops rotting in fields. So have the trade wars but that's another story.

[yovargas]

I just read through that long Atlantic article. It was an excellent read and I very much appreciated it's even tone, taking an honest look at both the benefits and the hardships of immigration, as well as being willing to criticize much of the politicized rhetoric on both sides of the isle. But the quote that most stuck with me is that after trying to objectively analyze the pros and cons of immigration policies he concludes:

Yet the true bottom line is this: Neither the fiscal costs nor the economic benefits of immigration are large enough to force a decision one way or the other. Accept the most negative estimate of immigration’s dollar costs, and the United States could still afford a lot of immigration. Believe the most positive reckoning of the dollar benefits that mass immigration provides, and they are not so large that the United States would be crazy to refuse them. For good or ill, immigration’s most important effects are social and cultural, not economic.

I cannot help but read that and yet again think that those for whom preventing illegal immigration is their #1 concern, that it is rooted merely in a fear of a country that is more ethnically and culturally diverse. IOW, they are afraid of a browner country.

[yovargas]

Adding another link; this article talks about how the liberal view on immigration has changed markedly in recent years:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ar ... ke/528678/

This article is also very good I think, even if I don't agree with all of it. But I am irritated that it spends a bunch of time highlighting how the left has gotten more extreme on this issue, without pointing out that a lot of that change is probably because the right has gotten more extreme on the issue. The left doesn't generally consider immigration reform one of its major, top priorities and I believe that if Trump hadn't come along with his extreme talk of building walls and banning a religious group, liberals wouldn't have had a reason to form such strong reactions.

[Cerin]

This article is also very good I think, even if I don't agree with all of it. But I am irritated that it spends a bunch of time highlighting how the left has gotten more extreme on this issue, without pointing out that a lot of that change is probably because the right has gotten more extreme on the issue. The left doesn't generally consider immigration reform one of its major, top priorities and I believe that if Trump hadn't come along with his extreme talk of building walls and banning a religious group, liberals wouldn't have had a reason to form such strong reactions.

I agree that reaction to Trump is driving the left's extremism on the issue. I think 'the right' has been pretty consistent in their attitude about illegal immigration, but Trump's actions have certainly been more extreme than his predecessors'.

[Frelga]

What specific policies from the Democratic lawmakers would you describe as extreme?

[Cerin]

I think opposing any enforcement of immigration law, and categorizing anyone who favors enforcement of immigration law a racist, are extreme positions. But I don't think this is unique to the illegal immigration issue. I think the left (which I view as having come unhinged with Trump's election) tend to condemn anyone who disagrees with any of their agenda as a hater or -phobe, and I think this tendency has been exacerbated by hatred of Trump, much as hatred of Obama drove the right wing over the edge.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I think opposing any enforcement of immigration law, and categorizing anyone who favors enforcement of immigration law a racist, are extreme positions.

Those would indeed be extreme positions. However, I'm not aware of anyone who actually holds those positions.

[Frelga]

You wanna hear something extremist?

Feds Tell 9th Circuit: Detained Kids ‘Safe and Sanitary’ Without Soap

The Trump administration argued in front of a Ninth Circuit panel Tuesday that the government is not required to give soap or toothbrushes to children apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border and can have them sleep on concrete floors in frigid, overcrowded cells, despite a settlement agreement that requires detainees be kept in “safe and sanitary” facilities.

All three judges appeared incredulous during the hearing in San Francisco, in which the Trump administration challenged previous legal findings that it is violating a landmark class action settlement by mistreating undocumented immigrant children at U.S. detention facilities.

“You’re really going to stand up and tell us that being able to sleep isn’t a question of safe and sanitary conditions?'” U.S. Circuit Judge Marsha Berzon asked the Justice Department’s Sarah Fabian Tuesday.

Is this who we are now?

[yovargas]

I don't think this thread is a place for "look at the awful things this administration is doing" stories. There are certainly other places for that around here. But I will say, again, that stories like that are what's been pushing liberals to move farther to the left.

[Cerin]

I think opposing any enforcement of immigration law, and categorizing anyone who favors enforcement of immigration law a racist, are extreme positions.

Those would indeed be extreme positions. However, I'm not aware of anyone who actually holds those positions.

How else would you describe the left's/Dem's current position, when they criticize every move that is made to enforce immigration law. That is certainly the position of sanctuary city governments.

A general question for anyone -- can you list which types of immigration law enforcement you currently support?

[Frelga]

I don't think there is any place that is NOT the place for this discussion. I think this is not the time for discussing anything else. When we stop keeping terrified children in cold, overcrowded cells and debating whether they deserve soap, THEN we can calmly discuss long term changes in the immigration policy.

[Frelga]

Here's a Twitter thread that I consider a prerequisite to continuing this conversation.

https://twitter.com/ECMcLaughlin/status ... 7501484033

My friend has done two tours now volunteering as a legal advocate inside CBP facilities.

She passed along information about what is happening there that indicates that the Trump Administration is violating every basic human right, and is moving toward military "solutions."

2/

I ask you again. Is this who we are?

[River]

I was pretty happy with the days when we didn't have government attorneys in court arguing that it's safe and sanitary to deny soap and sleeping mats to asylum seekers.

I was pretty happy with the days when we didn't have government attorneys arguing that it's okay to cage up children seeking asylum well past the 72 hour period required by law.

I was pretty happy with the days when we weren't detaining asylum seekers of any age under freeways in the heat.

I was pretty happy with the days when the executive branch of the US government wasn't being deliberately cruel in the hopes that word would get out and serve as a deterrent (spoiler alert: it's not working).

I could go on. I understand that a lot of people weren't happy with the practice of releasing asylum seekers after getting them into the system and prefer to see them all behind chain link and razor wire while the immigration courts make their way through their multi-year backlog (why hire judges when you can build a wall?). However, the reality was, we don't have enough chain link and razor wire and we never actually needed it to begin with. The previous system was working. They called Obama the Great Deporter for a reason. He was very clear about who was getting prioritized for removal and that got pundits in a twist, but his administration set the record for people removed and they did it withot the sort of imagery and rhetoric we're getting now. Which isn't to say the system was perfect - a lot of what we're seeing now is the worst ideas from the Obama years dialed up to 11 - but it was an order of magnitude more humane than what we've got now.

Of course, the catch and release protocl didn't line the pockets of private prison companies, so there's that. Never forget that there are those eager and willing to get rich off of human misery and they are willing to buy politicians.

[Cerin]

It seems to be the Democrats who are blocking a $4.5 billion bill to improve conditions in the detention centers.

[elengil]

Is it? Are Republicans pushing for it and Democrats not? Is that what you meant to say? Or do you just mean not quite enough Democrats are backing it to overcome all the Republicans opposed to it? Why are Republicans not funding their detention centers instead of blaming Democrats for the poor conditions Republicans and this administration have created?

Why have basic items like toothbrushes been confiscated in the first place? What exactly is the point of taking these items? Only to then hold Democrats responsible for not replacing them?

How about let's stop putting kids in detention centers, then we don't need to fund them at all.